Carotenoids are a class of naturally-occuring yellow, orange or red tetraterpenoids, found in traces in plant tissue, algae, bacteria and fungi. In particular they are found in vegetable sources such as carrots, spinach, tomatoes and fruits, such as, mango, peach, pumpkim, pappaya. The more commonly known carotenoids are, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, lycopene and cryptoxanthin.
Carotenoids possess significant nutritional value, carotenes and cryptoxanthin being considered as a provitamin A precursor for the formation of retinal and Vitamin A in humans. Vitamin A, an essential vitamin, for life is not synthesized in the animal cell.
Because carotenoids occur naturally in only trace amounts, the carotenoids must be extracted in concentrated form in order to be useful. Further carotenoids are sensitive to oxygen, air, heat and light.
Nutritionists advocate the daily use of carrots apart from other fresh vegetables and fruits in diet. Carrots are grown seasonally and good quality carrots are not available throughout the year at affordable prices. A little advertised fact about carrots is that only 20% of the total carotenes present are absorbed even when carrots are eaten in a finely grated form. The percentage of absorption from coarsely grated raw or cooked carrots is still less being around 5%.
The low absorption is attributed to the poor permeability of the cellulosic cell wall to carotenes even after cooking with the result that the major part remains enclosed within the cells. Hence as a source for deriving Vitamin A and use by themselves, carotenoid supplements free from cellulose are strongly recommended. Another advantage of using provitamin A carotenoids is that indiscriminate use of Vitamin A leads to serious toxic effects (Hypervitaminosis) whereas even in large doses carotenoids are harmless.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,567,362 describes fractional centrifugation process for the separation of colloidal dispersoids of active plant pigment units from the generated vegetable hydrosol.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,739,145 describes the separation of coagulated carotenoid-protein particles following heating of a suspension of the vegetable fiber-separated particles in vegetable serum.
U.K. patent 776,405 describes a carotene-concentrate used as a foodstuff for animals using calcium hydroxide and subsequent pH adjustment with phosphoric acid and then with formic acid.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,848,508 describes a process for recovery of carotene from carrots and provides a saturated solution of carotene in natural carrot oil from carrots.
WTO 86/04059 describes the use of a pectolytic enzyme followed by ultrafiltration for extracting and concentrating carotene.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,095 describes the use of calcium chloride, calcium hydroxide, calcium lactate or calcium gluconate to extract carotenoids from natural sources.
None of the above or any known processes provide a composition containing carotenoids in combination with micro and macro nutrients, the carotenoids being bound in moieties as in the natural source of carotenoids.